A Blog of Worldly Dimensions

Tales of the Nitu

This is a project from my Art 2 class. It’s shown completely unfolded, but is meant to be looked at, played with, and examined in different configurations. The teacher instructed us to create a piece that would not only create an organized composition or scene when completely unfolded, but also be able to create individual scenes in each quarter or section of two consecutive panels – basically a scene within a scene within a scene. The medium was black paper cut out with X-acto knife and glued onto white paper.

A few days before, I had gone to visit my older sister and her friends, and we had played a Role Playing Game called Ganakagok. The story took place in an arctic environment where the Sun had never risen. The Nitu, or indigenous people, had two types of gods, and somehow, each player was told the sun would rise – maybe through divine intervention – who knows. The point of the game is to fulfill destinies before the sun comes up – and this piece tells the story me, my sister, and all her friends crafted over the many hours we played. The fireplace, the bear, the cracks in the ice, the mountains, and the faint half-moon of the rising sun all have their parts in the story.

Aside from the story itself, this piece also represents an arctic scene in general. The shapes of each item are intentionally crude, mimicking simplistic Inuit art.

Once I had finished the first piece, I still had large sections left over – and I decided to create the same scene in reverse, using red as my background. This piece doesn’t have quite the same story about it – but one can imagine that it is a continuation of the first story – with more ice cracks, and the sun fully risen into the sky. The red tinge brings an unsettling feeling to the otherwise calm piece, and it is up to your imagination to fill in the story behind it.